A member of the search community claimed in a tweet that her client had explicitly told her that spending more on pay-per-click (PPC) ads would improve their organic search rankings.
The accusation was shocking to many in the Twitter thread because Google has long insisted that there is no direct impact on the organic rankings of the use of their ads.
Google Advertising and Search Policy
Google has long maintained that there is a firewall between the paid and the organic side and that both sides do not communicate.
Terrifying requests from Google claim
Because Google maintains this separation between Google’s paid and organic figures, one search marketer on Twitter expressed shock after a customer of Google’s PPC sales was asked to increase their spending to increase their rankings.
Shakedown by a Google Ads client?
The word “shot“Has several meanings, including extortion. Extortion means that someone has to make someone pay by means of a threat. It is a word that means corruption.
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The word shakedown aptly conjures up the image of holding someone upside down and shaking their money out of their pockets.
“I do not yet know how to deal with the fact that Google has shaken off only one of our customers. In essence, they were told to spend more on paid advertising to improve the organic search * for their brand. ”
‘Those of us who have been active in SEO for a long time knew that Google would do it, but Google has always denied it.
It really got different to see them say it out loud. ‘
Person insists this is not a misunderstanding
Some, of course (and reasonably) asked if that was possibly wrong.
Could it be a misrepresentation of ‘if you increase brand exposure through advertising, more people might search for brands and improve your results there as well’?
– Ammon Johns♞ (@Ammon_Johns) 7 January 2021
The response of the person who reported the alleged incident was no, they reported that it was not incorrect communication.
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They said the Google salesperson’s alleged request was unequivocal. They said the Google Ads salesperson explicitly linked the improvement in organic rankings to an increase in advertising spending.
Nor was it just something that was allegedly communicated orally. The person who told the alleged incident said that the Google seller put it in writing by email.
‘Luckily our client sent the email with a’ holy cow, I can not believe they put it in writing. What do you think?”
We have sophisticated and smart customers. ”
Dan followed in the Twitter thread:
‘I have to ask you to trust me when I say it was blatantly pro-quo. I prefer not to be more specific in public right now while I wait to see if it’s news or not. ”
Google’s Danny Sullivan enters
Maybe no one was more concerned than Danny Sullivan.
He stops the discussion to tweet an answer:
‘Advertising spending will not increase your SEO. Anyway. And if you want to DM the information for me, I’m following the @GoogleAds team to find out why it was said. Because it should never be said, because it absolutely does not work that way. ”
Someone replied that PPC should not be used organically to sell more ads.
Glad you cleared out Danny, but it really needs to be addressed. It can not be allowed to be used as leverage to sell ads, especially now when businesses simply do not have the money to spend
– Dara McGann (@darasRantings) 7 January 2021
Google’s Danny Sullivan has confirmed that he has already taken action.
“It will be addressed. I’ve already sent some emails about it. I suspect the representative may have been referring to studies that I recall that users may sometimes click more on ads or unpaid search results when both are present. Which is NOT a way to promote SEO rankings … ”
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In response to someone else, Danny replies:
It is very easy to solve. If one of our advertising agents said that, I would expect them to have a very serious reminder that they should never say it. I also expect them to have been told never to say such a thing, as all Googlers are told.
– Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) 7 January 2021
The discussion ends peacefully with the original poster confirming that Danny contacted her.
to people following this, I confirmed that Danny issued via DM. Furthermore, I need to maintain the confidentiality of my clients.
– Melinda Byerley (@MJB_SF) 7 January 2021
Google PPC and Organic Search Separation
Google was originally an ad-free service. This made Google popular because the other search engines were overloaded with banner ads, which made for such a bad user experience.
When Google finally introduced ads, they promised that the ad side would never affect the organic search rankings.
While Google has been accused over the years of coordinating with the paid search side to show poor search results to encourage more ad clicks, these were usually ideas from the edge of search marketing, unfounded conspiracy theories.
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The majority of people in the Twitter discussion seem to believe that the alleged incident was not a normal event. Read the Twitter discussion here.